Galaxy S8, iPhone 7 Plus, Google Pixel, OnePlus 3T speeds tested

With the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8, you pretty much have the late 2016 to early 2017 smartphone flagships. Which means it’s probably time to do a roundup of these smartphone’s performance. That is what YouTube channel EverythingApplePro just did by pitting most, though not all, of them against each other in a massive speed test showdown. Who came out first or even second isn’t probably going to surprise you. But who came out the last will.

You might question its objectivity, given the YouTube channel is explicitly an Apple fan channel, but there is alway some basis to the iPhone’s top performance. Apple practically has control over everything, from the hardware to the software and can squeeze out every last juice from its iPhones. Especially now that designs its own processors.

The one thing where the iPhone 7 Plus did unbelievably well is in reloading apps that were left in the background. iOS is notorious for killing background apps, so the iPhone 7 Plus, with the least amount of RAM of the five phones, coming out first in that area is almost too good to be true. Especially after loading a memory-hungry file.

The surprise winner here is the OnePlus 3T, and not because it came out the fastest. Indeed, in some tests it came out second to last even. But the fact that it leaves the Google Pixel and LG G6 in its dust is remarkable when you consider it’s the cheapest of the five. The 6 GB of RAM definitely doesn’t hurt, especially in the multi-tasking test. But it doesn’t save the OnePlus 3T when it comes to cold-starting apps.

The biggest disappointment is the LG G6. Although it has the same processor as the OnePlus 3T and the Google Pixel, it performs rather poorly. It isn’t always last, that much is true, but for an early 2017 smartphone, you’d almost be shocked that it performs worse or just as bad as a lower clocked Google Pixel.